


Hunters In Space: Season One

by foxy_jambread



Series: Hunters In Space [1]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Angry Trees, Angst, Angsty Teen Mariemaia, Chang Wufei Needs A Nap, Demonic Possession, Dorothy Isn't Evil, Duo Maxwell Is Awkward AF, Harpy Explosions, Humor, Like Seriously The Slowest Burn, Multi, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Partnership, Poly Characters, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Someone Save Trowa, ace characters, child endangerment, episodic, ghosts n shit, heavily based on SPN and I'm not sorry, okay?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-24 17:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21801337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxy_jambread/pseuds/foxy_jambread
Summary: "Well? Was this fun, or what?"I stared at him. Fun? Fighting against the spirit of an ornamental pear tree, nearly drowning in tree sap, and barely avoiding having my head taken off by magic vines...was meant to be fun? Duo Maxwell was insane. That wasn't news, exactly, but this? This proved it. He was without a doubt the craziest son of a bitch I had ever had the misfortune of falling into alliance with. He had nearly gotten me killed. This hadn't been fun, it had been a trainwreck from start to finish, and I was not going to let him pretend otherwise.I opened my mouth to tell him off. "You owe me a pair of shoes.":::The year is After Colony 203. After finding out that Wufei's left the Preventers, Duo calls him up with a simple offer - 'wanna get lost and do some good?' Happy to fade into obscurity, Wufei follows his one-time ally on a hell of an adventure, battling harpies, poltergeists, and the occasional ornamental pear tree spirit. Well, okay, really just one of those.OROrnamental Trees Are A Pointless Thing To Put On A Space Colony And Mars Is Probably Super Fuckin Haunted.
Relationships: Chang Wufei/Duo Maxwell, Dorothy Catalonia/Relena Peacecraft, Dorothy Catalonia/Relena Peacecraft/Heero Yuy, Relena Peacecraft/Heero Yuy, Trowa Barton/Quatre Raberba Winner, Zechs Merquise/Lucrezia Noin
Series: Hunters In Space [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571008
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	Hunters In Space: Season One

"Wanna get lost?"

If - and I did mean if - I escaped the sanity-sucking black hole I had managed to get caught in relatively unharmed, I was going to get those ridiculous words tattooed across my thrice-damned face. I wanted a clear reminder, every time I looked into a mirror, of what had possessed me to leave that warm little cafe on a forgettable street on a forgettable colony to follow the violet-eyed maniac who had spoken them into his world.

I only wished I could regret it.

At the moment, though, there would be no escaping, no tattooing, and no regret. Mostly because, at said moment, I was nearly up to my knees in tree sap, which was making evading the thorny vines lashing near my throat something of a chore. Not to mention, I was too busy dredging up every vile curse I could think of in every language I knew with the intent to ensure that Duo Maxwell and every descendant he managed to produce would feel my wrath from now until the end of time. Only the sight of Duo flailing madly, bent backwards awkwardly as his braid dragged messily (and probably painfully) through the sticky blob that adhered him to the ground, gave me any measure of satisfaction with the current goings-on.

I certainly didn't have a moment to spare towards thinking about the events that had led me to this particular situation. They hadn't been especially noteworthy, anyway, save for the fact that it all began with a choice that, had I been in a more emotionally secure state, I would never have made.

There were moments in every person's life that would, at some point in their journey, reveal themselves to have been major crossroads, usually without the person having noticed until it was far too late to turn back. There had been so many of these crossroads in my own life, I could be fairly certain that the roadmap of my existence resembled a pair of fishnet stockings. And I had worked hard at not regretting a single one of the choices I had made, not because I believed they had been the best choices, or because everything had magically turned out okay, but because regret was mostly a useless exercise, and I had better uses for my time and energy.

There was one moment, though, that was easily recognizable as a turning point in my life. One moment that would forever live in my mind as the moment I made the best, worst, and stupidest decision I had ever made in the twenty-two years I'd been alive. It was, essentially, the existential equivalent of deciding to turn left with the full knowledge that five yards up the road the bridge was out, and there would be no way to stop before plunging off the edge, plummeting to the ground, and exploding in a brilliant, if brief, ball of flames.

That moment had been on an otherwise immemorable day in early February. I'd looked up at Duo Maxwell as he'd slid into the booth across from me in some hole-in-the-wall cafe. It had been full of deep and interesting college students, wearing deep and interesting clothing and talking about deep and interesting music, and oddly, Duo had blended in perfectly. Or perhaps not so oddly - Duo had always had a knack for fitting into places you were certain he couldn't.

"Hey, 'Fei! How's it hangin'?"

I'd looked up from the dregs of my tea and blinked at him. He'd grinned back, not in the least perturbed at my inability to muster up a greeting of any sort for the man who'd once been something of an ally.

"I hear you're woefully unemployed, and I've got a spot opening up," he'd said without preamble, tipping the salt shaker this way and that with one finger, eyes never leaving mine. They'd burned with the same sort of bittersweet humor laced with madness that they'd held during the war, and I probably should have been worried. I'd been intrigued, instead.

"So?" Leaning forward, his mouth had stretched into a grin like a Beam Scythe. "Whaddaya say, 'Fei? Wanna get lost?"

"I'm already lost," I'd said, not liking how tired my own voice sounded, but without the energy to do anything about it. The events of two months previous had scraped away everything by then, leaving me hollow and brittle and exhausted. I'd been done with anything more strenuous than simply existing for weeks, and I'd known that I'd looked and sounded it.

Duo hadn't looked at me with pity, or exasperation, or concern, for which I'd been grateful. Instead, he'd snorted, propping his chin on one fist, and drawled, "Aren't we all? C'mon, man. Let's get the hell outta here and get to work."

I could have said no. I could have said anything.

I'd thrown a few credits down to cover my bill, stood, and followed him out the door.

Fast forward two days, four greasy burgers that still threatened to tie my intestines into knots, and one ridiculously difficult search for just the right ornamental pear tree, and there I was, knee-deep in sap on the outside and wishing I hadn't been such a sap on the inside while Duo fumbled his Zippo and nearly lost it to the infuriated tree spirit that was attacking us.

"Why do they even need these things?" he growled. "Ornamental trees. Fucking pointless."

"I hate you so much," I grunted as one of the thorny vines caught me across the forearm, leaving a mess of cuts and welts in its wake. "You owe me for this, Maxwell."

Heaving a breathless chuckle, Duo wobbled and collapsed further back, sap oozing up over his hips and climbing up his torso. "Send me a bill," he snarked absently, flicking the lighter on and tossing it towards the kerosene-soaked tree.

The sprite howled in rage as flames licked at her tree, her form flickering and smoldering until only the echoes of her fury remained. Then, in a breath, even that was gone.

The sap receded, inching outward in a puddle instead of trying to envelop me, and I squelched out of it, not caring that it meant leaving both of my shoes and one of my socks behind. The sound of rushing water filled my head as my heart pounded, adrenaline causing my fingers to twitch as I gazed around at the scene - tree sap clinging to every available surface in the nursery, the glowing embers of what was once a strong sapling crackling lightly, my sword wavering where it was plunged into a pile of mulch bags. Sighing, I went to retrieve it, my remaining sock threatening to abandon me as the adhesive floor sucked at it.

Duo waved his one free arm at me, the other still caught in the grip of a slightly-enchanted azalea. "A little help, man?" he wheedled, grimacing as he pulled his braid sloppily over his shoulder, strings of amber fluid squishing between his fingers. He watched me with wide eyes as I complied silently, slashing easily at the shrubbery until it released him, and when he stood, he clapped me on the shoulder companionably.

"Well? Was this fun, or what?"

I stared at him. Fun? Fighting against the spirit of an ornamental pear tree that was pissed at being dragged away from Earth, nearly drowning in tree sap, and barely avoiding having my head taken off by magic vines...was meant to be fun? Duo Maxwell was insane. That wasn't news, exactly, but this? This proved it. He was without a doubt the craziest son of a bitch I had ever had the misfortune of falling into alliance with. He had nearly gotten me killed. This hadn't been fun, it had been a trainwreck from start to finish, and I was not going to let him pretend otherwise.

I opened my mouth to tell him off. "You owe me a pair of shoes," was what I said. Not the scathing retort I'm sure he'd been expecting, but I felt it communicated my feelings on the relative gaiety of the last two days perfectly.

"Sure thing," he replied easily, not meeting my eyes as he did his best to wipe his braid off with a palm leaf. "We'll stop at the shuttleport shop before we head to L1."

"What." It wasn't a question, really, so much as a demand for sanity. Or perhaps a plea for my life. Probably both; I couldn't be sure.

"L1," he repeated, still not looking at me. "There've been a couple of suspicious deaths at a specific residence. Practically screams 'poltergeist'. You in?"

Now. Now was my chance. Say no, I told myself. There's still time before you topple off the edge, Chang. Say no, turn around, and walk away.

"We're picking up snacks that aren't a tragic testament to your nutritional apathy," I muttered, wiping my blade on the few clean square inches that remained on his sleeve. It didn't do much besides smear the sap around, but I felt better when he huffed in irritation.

Petty, perhaps, but considering the down-the-rabbit-hole effect he'd had on my life, I felt I was entitled.

"Tell me about poltergeists."

* * *

Opening Theme: [[Here I Am - JJ Lin & Jung YongHwa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSYILvtW5eU)]

Episode One: Where There's Smoke, There's Dragonfire

  
  
  
  


* * *

_Stella_ was an ongoing tragedy of outdated technology. She was loud on the inside, flashy on the outside, and had a large orange earthworm stenciled sloppily along the length of her that contrasted garishly with the violet paint job, and which Duo swore up and down was actually a dragon.

"Did it when I decided to haul you out of your Pit of Despair," he'd explained when I had commented on it. I hadn't had the heart to follow through with another derisive comment. A mockery of art and a disgrace to my clan it might have been, but it had been done with the best of intentions, if not a little presumption.

How had he known I'd follow him? Did I project such an air of desperation that it had seemed inevitable?

She rumbled worryingly as we left L2-V08554 and its pointless pear trees behind (Duo insisted she 'purred' or 'growled', but as previously mentioned, he was clearly insane), spearing through the emptiness of space to the L1 cluster. Once we'd left L2's space, Duo flicked on the autopilot and unhooked his harness, weak gravity not hindering him a bit as he swung his legs over the arm of his chair to settle in sideways. Arms stretched back over his head, he snagged the worn duffel he'd been lugging around the whole time and plunged his hand inside.

"I guess you're wondering how I know about this stuff," he offered unapologetically. "It was kinda rude to drag you out here without explaining entirely."

"Or at all," I reminded him, drawing out a pout.

"I gave you the essentials!"

Dear reader, I would like to take a moment to point out that, yes, in all honesty (which is about the only thing you consistently get from Duo Maxwell, though it's not always complete, untwisted, and/or sensible honesty), Duo had explained what we were going to be doing. The conversation, taking place shortly after leaving the shuttleport the day he'd found me, had gone something like this:

Me: Are you going to tell me where we're going in this floating insult to good taste?

Duo: Leave _Stella_ alone! Babble babble nonsense nonsense! [borderline-obscene fondling of ship controls]

Me: Yes, Duo, that's nice. Where are we going?

Duo: You wouldn't believe me if I told you, [random butchering of my name]!

Me: Try me.

Duo: We're going to L2 to find a tree! Then we're going to burn it!

Me: ... [gives up in favor of retaining sanity and reducing chances of strangling Duo Maxwell with his own intestines]

So, yes. There had been something resembling an explanation in there, if one squinted and turned one's head. Talking to Duo Maxwell was somewhat like handing him a conversational balloon, watching him twist it into what is clearly a giraffe, and somehow walking away holding a balloon-replica of St. Basil's Cathedral instead. Of course, by then he'd have vanished into thin air, and you'd be left holding a Russian landmark when all you'd wanted was a damned giraffe. The worst part was, you'd watched him the entire time, and he'd sure as hell made a giraffe...so you couldn't exactly accuse him of being duplicitous.

He'd undoubtedly slit your throat for the insult if you did, anyway.

"Here we go!" He levered himself somewhat upright, legs still dangling over the seat arm, and held up his discovery with a flourish worthy of a game show prize reveal, complete with toothy grin.

It was a book. Old - very old - and the pages were yellowed, some sticking out unevenly as though falling loose from the binding. There were no words stamped in the red leather cover, but there was an emblem in faded black. A wheel of some sort, with eight spokes pointing towards eight symbols, and an outer ring with writing on it in a language I didn't know.

Off my obvious curiosity, Duo winked. "Thirty-first Seal of Solomon. It's supposed to protect against negative forces," he added when my confusion didn't immediately clear. He wiggled the book a little. "It's all in here."

"Where did you get it?" was really the only thing I could think to ask.

If I hadn't been meeting Duo's gaze just then, I would never have noticed the change, but for a split second, several emotions scurried behind his eyes, distant and primal cousins of anger and grief. Emotions I knew instinctively, not by name because they had none, but through experience. I had held them about myself like a security blanket during the war, neither knowing nor caring how they would worm their way into me and grow like a vicious cancer.

"It was left to me," he said simply, and the liveliness there was a tinny recording of the real thing, "by someone I knew before."

Before.

So many 'befores' in our lives, and the lives of the only three other people to whom we could even begin to relate. Before our lives took a wrong turn. Before our training. Before the war. Before the end.

Before the beginning.

I didn't ask which he meant; it didn't much matter. The emotions that I had witnessed told me enough. He was off again, anyway, explaining that he'd received it on his eighteenth birthday, when a call from a very annoyed law firm on L2 had finally made its way to him, informing him that the book had been willed to him. We shared a quiet moment of appreciation for the amount of stubbornness it would have taken to track someone like Duo from his past to his present.

The way he held it suddenly made sense, though - gently, framed carefully in his hands, fingers splayed about the seal on the cover. Proud, and warm in a way his expression wasn't. What did it feel like, I wanted to know, to hold on to something real, something tangible, that tethered you to a past you'd thought had slipped through your fingers? It ached, I was sure, but wonderfully so.

Was there anything left of my own past? I wondered. My family? My heritage?

"Tell me," I said suddenly, wrenching myself out of useless self-pity and into the present. There would be time to search later. For now, I had much to learn.

* * *

The Book (as Duo called it, capital letters and all) was actually a journal, I discovered quickly. It had entries dating back to before the colonies, and many of the loose pages were actually that - scrap papers with notes, invocations, symbols, and maps that had been tucked away inside, usually at random. It was haphazard, bewildering, and incredibly frustrating.

"Have you thought about scanning this to a datapad?" I grumbled from where I sat crosslegged in the middle of a terrible mattress in a rundown motel room on L1. Duo leaned around the doorframe of the mildewed bathroom, and I stopped squirming in place and did my best to stoically endure the spring trying to get intimate with my rear end. He smirked, though, and I knew I'd been too slow to hide my discomfort. I told myself I didn't care - it was a damned uncomfortable bed, there would be no denying that. Normal people fidgeted. There was no shame in fidgeting. I could fidget if I wanted to.

"Thought about it," Duo hummed, moving to flop down on the other bed, undoubtedly dislodging fifty years' worth of spores and mites. "Haven't done it, though. I mean, yeah, it'd be good to have some kinda sensible database, but...I dunno, man. It feels wrong."

"Makes it less personal," I murmured in agreement, carefully turning one thin page to squint at an entry about hags.

"Yeah. Well," he amended, rolling over onto his stomach and trapping the end of his braid beneath his nose like a strange mustache, "that, and there's a lot of potentially powerful stuff in there. The thought of scanning it into a datapad...I mean, what if I accidentally download a demon onto the ESUN network or something?"

I considered this briefly before rolling my eyes. "I don't think you can download demons, Duo."

"Right, because you're the expert."

Turning to the next entry (ghouls and other corpse-eaters), I had to concede that point. I could doubt the possibility all I liked, but the fact remained that only a week ago, I would have doubted the existence of tree spirits, as well. Open-mindedness, it would seem, was the order of the day.

"Hey, 'Fei?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you..." Duo sighed, trailing off. I glanced over to see him on his back, end of his braid still caught between his nose and upper lip childishly, eyes focused on the popcorn-texture ceiling, his arms thrown over his head so that his fingers brushed the floor, one knee bent with the other leg crossed over it in a parody of ease. His expression was tight, though, and guarded, and I tensed automatically in response.

"Am I what?"

"Are you...fuck it, man," he grunted, letting his braid slip down to touch his fingertips and looking up at me. "Are you okay?"

"Okay?"

"Yeah, y'know." He waved one hand absently as he stared at me searchingly. "Okay."

I exhaled through my nose and closed the book gently. "In general, or in relation to something specific?"

"Uh...either? Both?"

"Specifically - and I'm assuming you mean 'am I okay with this?' - yes. I'm surprisingly okay with discovering that there are giant gaps in my knowledge of the workings of the universe and my place in it." I rested my chin against my fist and watched the progression of his slow smile. "But I've never been one to shy away from the discovery of new things, from learning opportunities. I was a scholar, you know. Before," I added, as though it wouldn't have been obvious. "I was a thinker, rather than a fighter."

At this, he looked intrigued, rolling back over to prop himself up on his elbows. "Yeah? Did you have, like, a focus or something?"

"Mmm. I was especially skilled in most sciences, and was encouraged to pursue that, but I decided on politics and poetry."

Duo threw his head back and laughed long and loud as I fought the urge to flush red. Was it so strange? As he calmed, though, he apologized. "Sorry, man, I just...they teach you Terrorism 101 in your politics classes?"

"No," I snorted. "Of course not. That I learned in poetry class."

He blinked up at me with startled eyes, then buried his face in the ratty duvet and nearly squealed with laughter, feet kicking occasionally.

"It wasn't that amusing," I murmured, turning back to The Book with a roll of my eyes.

"N-no," he wheezed, looking up again and scrubbing tears from his red-splotched cheeks. "Just...you made a joke...I didn't know you could be _funny_ , 'Fei. Oh, my God, you can be _funny_."

"Yes," I bit out dryly, "well, one needs a sense of humor when one intends to study politics."

Duo wheezed louder, and against my will, I smiled.

There were a few moments of silence once he'd calmed himself, and then he cleared his throat. "What about, uh...what about in general?"

It took me a moment to think back over our conversation to parse out what he was asking, but then I shrugged. "As okay as any of us will ever manage to be, I suppose," I hedged, ignoring the flash of irritation that crossed Duo's face.

"It's just, I dunno. I worry, ya know?"

Regarding him with a raised eyebrow, I hummed noncommittally and returned to my studies. It brought a question to mind, though - why had Duo really sought me out? He certainly hadn't stumbled into that cafe accidentally. He'd said that he'd heard I'd left the Preventers...but had he heard why? If he didn't know...

Glancing over at him, I caught him studying me with a blank, analytical sort of laser focus that would have seemed more at home in Heero Yuy's expression. It was a startling contrast to any other expression I'd seen on Duo's face - the grinning jokester, the maniacal God of Death, the defiant rebel. Interchangeable, and impossible to tell when they were masks and when they were real. This, though...it was very real, and unbelievably exposing.

When he caught my eye, though, he dialed it back to a friendly curiosity, smiling crookedly. I shook off the urge to shiver at the quicksilver shift and cleared my throat. "Do you know why I left?" I asked quietly.

Duo shrugged. "Nope."

"I...really?" This was a surprise. I had remembered Duo as being devilishly curious about things he didn't particularly need to know, and lacking any real respect for people's personal boundaries. Or perhaps those were simply the stereotypical L2 colonist traits that I'd projected onto him - it would not have been the first time I'd made such snap judgements.

He regarded me with some amusement, as though he could see the shameful thoughts as they tumbled through my mind. "Yeah, Wufei. Really. Because, a) it wasn't my business to know, and two) even if I had been rude enough to ask, I'm willing to bet that whatever went down is classified all to hell and back. Anything to do with the five of us is these days." He watched as I considered this. "C'mon, 'Fei. You know me. I don't lie."

"Why is that?" Tilting my head, I felt my own curiosity bubble up, bolstered by the sudden desire to shift the subject from my own troubles. "It's not just you," I added when his eyebrows quirked at my sudden question. "I've heard it's a trait most everyone in the L2 cluster shares this...dedication to honesty."

"'Dedication to honesty,'" he repeated, chuckling softly. "That's gotta be the nicest way of putting it I've ever heard. And, yeah, I mean, I kinda take it to extremes, but most of us L2 strelos try to live honestly...so to speak."

Strelos, I repeated in my head. A term I didn't know, probably unique to either L2 or the Sweepers. Like most colony clusters and other isolated communities, both L2 and the Sweepers had their own dialects that often caught outsiders up. I could guess what it meant, though - colonists, those who lived their lives in space.

Humming thoughtfully, I pushed a little more. "What do you mean, live honestly?"

Grinning widely, he waved one hand dismissively. "Yeah, I know, it sounds like we all try to be saints or something, which everyone knows isn't true. But...well, it's like Howard says - they can call us a lot of things, but at the end of the day, they can never say we were liars."

"So...what? You all believe that no matter what sins you commit, being truthful makes you good people?" I shook my head.

He shook his head along with me. "Gee, 'Fei, you make it sound like we're all serial killers or something. No. It's got nothing to do with being good people, man. It's stupid, I guess, but it's about pride."

"Pride?"

"Yeah. Pride. See, most of us, we don't get the chance to be good people, right? It's not even really an option, whether you're on the shit side of the class divide or the shiny side. You hit maybe three or four years old, and you know that whatever path you take, you're not gonna come out the other side with clean hands and a clear conscience. And when you die, whoever gets stuck with the task of saying nice things about you at your funeral is gonna have a hell of a job. Well, if they don't have anything nice to say, they can say you were honest. We don't have a lot to be proud of, but we have that, at least. Get it?"

"Got it."

"Good." Duo propped his chin up with his fist much as I had before and watched me watch him. "Why'd ya ask?"

"I don't know," I replied, turning my gaze to the terrible painting someone must have thought - quite wrongly - would make the room feel classier. It was one of those minimalist abstractions, two orange circles in one corner and a wavy black line beneath them, and another wavy black line in the opposite corner. I had no idea what it meant, and it certainly didn't speak to me, but staring at it was much less uncomfortable than meeting Duo's eyes. "I suppose I don't know very much about you. Or your birthplace."

"Pfft. Everyone knows everything important about L2. We're poor, rowdy, and uneducated, except for the lucky bastards on the shiny side of the class divide, who are rich, rowdy, and uneducated. We're good for hard labor, high end theft, and rioting, and not a whole lot else. What more do ya need to know?"

I contemplated that ridiculous spiel for a moment as I inspected the painting. "Well," I began slowly, fingers tapping on the cover of The Book, "someone on that colony was also good for fighting the ever-encroaching forces of evil, apparently. And," I added when Duo flinched, "at least one in my acquaintance is good for teaching me to do the same."

Duo flushed. Not a simple pink-at-the-tips-of-the-ears sort of flush, either - his face turned so red that for a moment, I was afraid it might catch fire. He laughed easily, though, brushing off my comment with a shrug. "That's a nice way of saying I'm good at dragging you down with me, huh?"

Better than sitting in a cramped cafe, staring at the dregs of a cup of tea and dwelling on the dregs of my life while I wait for my quiet and unremarkable implosion to finish, I thought suddenly. I didn't say it out loud, and Duo rolled off the bed and lunged for the television remote before I could say anything else, but it remained, pressing against my consciousness insistently.

I didn't know where the hell I was going, I realized. Or what I would encounter, or if I would survive. I didn't know if following Duo on this little trip was going to be the choice I couldn't help but truly regret. But I did know, without a doubt, in that moment, that when he'd offered me a partnership - however brief - he'd also offered me a life. Not just existence, but a life.

Duo Maxwell's partnership could very well get me killed, but it would also be what saved me, of that I had no doubt. I couldn't help but worry, though, that when he did discover what had happened two months before, that it would all come crumbling down, and I'd have nothing left to do but implode.

* * *

"So, you're a Hunter. That's the preferred term, correct?"

"Yep," Duo said lightly as we picked our way through the small cemetery. "Some people call us Exorcists or Crossmen, but that doesn't really cover the whole job, and it's a little religious for my tastes."

"Instead, you sound like the sort of man who wrestles bears and purchases deer urine."

He paused, frowning at me. "...what?"

"Deer urine," I replied, because I knew exactly what had him confused. "Deer hunters use it to attract bucks."

"So, what, they buy it in bottles or something?"

"I don't really know, Duo," I said in exasperation. "Deer hunting isn't a hobby of mine."

"But-"

"I heard it somewhere."

"Then-"

"I never followed up because, honestly, I've never had an interest in hunting, deer, or urine of any kind."

Duo was silent for a moment. "Oh. This way," he added, moving on again.

"Explain to me," I requested as reasonably as I could for a relatively sane man wandering around a graveyard under the cover of colony-night, "what we are doing here."

"We're gonna find Mr. Yardley's grave."

"And?"

"Uh..." Duo glanced back at me nervously. "Dig up his remains...?" He cringed a bit, as though this would be what sent me screaming into the manufactured gloom.

I thought it over briefly, nodded, and gestured with the flashlight. "He died sometime in 117," I remarked. "He'll be further back."

Burial wasn't really a common occurrence on colonies. It was practicality - decomposing bodies plus contained ecosystems divided by limited space equals empty graves. Small empty graves. With a remainder of rendering corpses into their most basic components to be used where applicable - not something most life-long colony citizens think about often, for sanity's sake. It was a reality, but not a very pleasant one.

On Earth, where some societies continued to bury their dead, this sort of thing was often considered to be morbid and akin to cannibalism. Where eating the dead came into it, I wasn't too certain; colony-reared folk could be a bit weird, but we weren't _that_ weird. The practicality of it, however, couldn't be denied, especially on a planet that was already too small for the living, much less the dead, to occupy comfortably. Thus, Earthlings found other ways to both preserve the memory of the dead, and dispose of the corpse "respectfully".

Cremation was the popular method of body disposal on Earth, save for those communities where religion forbade it, though the practice of cremating an entire corpse was considered to be wasteful in the colonies. Here, it was more common to burn a small part of the deceased - a lock of hair being the most common item - and turn the rest of the body over for rendering. This practice was observed by my own clan, in fact, along with the burning of ghost money and other such representations of material and sentimental goods.

Among those societies within the colonies where the burial of the dead was once common, a custom sprang up wherein, rather than burning locks of hair and such, these things were placed in a small, shallow grave and marked with a little gravestone. These graves, sometimes called "lockboxes" or "safe deposits", hardly ever contained anything of monetary value (due to the dangers of grave robbing), instead containing a scrap of a favorite shirt, a well-loved book, or a ratty plush toy, along with physical remainders such as hair, teeth, or fingernails.

These remainders were what we were looking for, I assumed. 'Physical remains are often the only real link between a spirit and the living world,' Duo had paraphrased from The Book.

There were worse ways to spend an evening out, I supposed.

There was a brief, awkward moment of silence when we reached the grave during which we both stared aimlessly at it as the truth of what we were about to do struck us. Grave desecration had never been on my bucket list, certainly, and for all his eccentricities, I doubted it had ever been on Duo's either. Then again, he'd done this before ("once or twice," he'd hedged in his travesty of a shuttle), so I could only guess his discomfort was more a show of sympathy for me than anything.

"Sorry, man," Duo muttered at the little headstone, sliding a shovel out of his bag and hefting it apologetically, "nothin' personal."

Mr. Yardley seemed to think otherwise, though, because no sooner had Duo's shovel pierced the ground than a cold wind hustled around us, turning our breath into steaming plumes.

"Shit," Duo hissed as a pale figure flickered into sight.

Shit, indeed, I thought as I took in our opponent. Still clad in the factory worker's jumper he'd died in, the spirit's head was neatly cleaved in two - remnants of the workplace accident that had taken his life - and that was disturbing enough, to be honest. His eyes were what set my heart pounding with adrenaline, though. They were eerily red, standing out starkly against the pale suggestion of what was once his skin, and they were locked on Duo with a fanatical, mindless fury I hadn't seen since the war.

Duo hacked into the soil again, plunging deeply in an attempt to get under the box and lever it out, ostensibly, and an enraged scream emanated from the specter.

Sighing, I dumped all I was carrying on the ground. The flashlight bounced a few times, the powerful beam slicing through the headstones before shuddering out as the spirit approached. Breathing deeply, I slid into my warrior's mindset and drew a weapon I'd only recently acquired - the fireplace poker I'd had to pry bodily out of the wall of Mr. Yardley's living room when we'd gone to do a little preliminary investigation ("Just to be sure we're not, say, unearthing some poor, innocently-resting soul's remains," Duo had assured me).

Mr. Yardley was doing a decent enough job of proving we were on the right track, reaching for me as he was, teeth gnashing in animalistic aggression.

I really, really hoped the damned poker was actually iron.

* * *

"You okay, man?"

I looked up from my position, spread-eagle on the sod glaring up at the hull of the colony as though I could cow the entire tin can into apologizing for the travesty in which it had been an unwitting participant, and caught Duo's eyes as he bent over me. He braced his hands on his knees, eyebrow quirked, daring me to admit defeat.

Groaning, I lifted one arm and wiggled my fingers at him in an admittedly childish gesture. Considering I'd just been pinballed into nearly every gravestone in the place, I considered a bit of immaturity my right.

Duo snorted softly, reaching out to grasp my hand firmly and haul me to my feet. The world spun for a moment in a way that had nothing to do with colony rotation, and then everything righted itself, leaving me achy and bruised, but otherwise fine.

"I'm fine," I reiterated out loud when the concern failed to drain from his expression. "I've had worse."

"Yeah," Duo laughed. "I'm sure it doesn't even compare to being rattled around a mobile suit cockpit for a couple of years. Thanks for keepin' him busy, though - not sure how I would've done that one alone." He laughed again, a bit strained.

I levered my newly-acquired iron poker out of the ground, eyes sliding to the red-hot lockbox that had contained, of all things, Mr. Yardley's favorite hairpiece, split in two as his skull had been. His descendents had clearly had a morbid sense of humor, I thought, poking at the box with my weapon of choice. "He's gone?"

"Yep. Or, well..." Duo frowned at the lockbox. "I think so. I hope so."

I gave Duo my most peevishly exasperated look, which he shrugged off with all the grace of one used to being looked at with peevish exasperation.

"It'll be fine," he concluded. "And if not..." He shrugged again, more helplessly this time, eyes shifting over the landscape.

The silence that stretched this time was only slightly more awkward that the 'we're-about-to-desecrate-a-grave' variety of earlier. I cleared my throat.

"So. Where to next?" I asked.

Duo started a little, glancing at me, and it occurred to me suddenly that he had once again been expecting me to head for the hills. I sighed a little internally, swinging the poker up to rest on my shoulder, other hand propped on my hip, feet planted, eyes narrowed, and chin tilted. It was a stance I'd once heard Une call my 'Just So You Know The Mere Fact That I'm Deigning To Entertain Your Idiocy Is Both A Testament To My Endless Reserves Of Patience And Proof That I Don't Altogether Hate You' look, and I felt that applied nicely in the current circumstances.

"Well?" I challenged.

Duo's face split into a manic grin, smudges of grave dirt and ash giving him the look of a woodland imp. His eyes were more vivid than ever in the faint glow of the flashlights that were shining once again and the slightly orange tint of the cooling lockbox.

"How about L4?" he offered. "You like birds?"

* * *

"Birds," I deadpanned, reaching up to peel off the warm strip of viscera that had adhered to my forehead like wet crepe paper.

Duo peered at me through the smoke, waving one hand absently. "Eh. Close enough."

I glanced around at the devastation we'd caused; half the floor of the warehouse was scorched and pocked with little blast craters, the other half splattered as we were in pieces of harpy. "Right. What part of the little needle teeth and the fact that they were all possessed of a decent enough right hook said 'bird' to you, exactly?"

"Ah, loq'sey," he groused good-naturedly, flicking bits of flesh off his jeans. "We don't get a lot of birds on L2, so sue me."

Loq'sey, I filed away. Another word I didn't understand, this one spoken with such attitude I could easily grasp the underlying meaning: _whatever_.

Sighing, I opened my mouth to snark back only to be cut off when the charred remains of our foes suddenly began to crumble into ash.

"Huh." Duo flashed me a grin as he went from flicking gooey tissue from his clothes to patting away dust. "Self-cleaning, nice."

"If you keep doing that, you're going to-"

He sneezed, the sound carrying into every nook and cranny of the warehouse, and after a brief moment, his expression went from just-sneezed to did-I-seriously-just-inhale-dead-monster.

"Oh, christ," he whined, rubbing at his nose. "That's so unsanitary."

Rolling my eyes, I reached out to snag the front of his jacket and pull him towards the door. "Those explosives didn't make a big racket, but someone might have heard. We should get back to the motel and rinse off."

"Ugh, I'm gonna need a bottle brush for my sinuses."

"You'll be fine, you big baby," I grunted, very aware that I was speaking to him like I might've one of my own younger cousins. Perhaps it was this, not agreement with the statement itself, that had Duo following along cooperatively and relatively silently but for a little nasal huff or two.

I won the first shower by right of shoving him bodily out of my way and locking the door before he could get out more than a 'hey', and though I kept it quick out of habit, it felt remarkably refreshing to watch the water, tinted pale gray, circle the drain as if taking a few more of my cares with it.

This trip, for all my bruises and possible aspiration of mythological remains, had done me more good in a week and a half than all my years with the Preventers had done, and certainly more than my two months of wallowing had. Setting aside the fact that clearly Duo and I made an effective team - something that was growing more apparent with every job we did - there was something about the immediacy of it that soothed me. See evil, fight evil, as it were. There were remarkably few gray areas, and while I couldn't kid myself that the entire hunter business was like that, for the moment it seemed to be doing the trick.

I left the water running for Duo, sacrificing water conservation for courtesy to my...my partner. Pausing for a moment as I wrapped the rough, tattered towel about my waist, I rolled the word around in my head. I had thought of this arrangement as a partnership before, but it was only just now hitting me.

I had a partner. A brother-in-arms as it were. It was at once sobering in its associated responsibility and uplifting in the companionship it promised. I dared not imagine we might truly become friends, but to have a partner at my back again...

I didn't hate the thought, I decided as I threw open the door, stepped out, shoved Duo inside, and kicked it shut again, cutting off his protests.

No. I didn't hate it at all.

* * *

Our first unexpected job, I realized as I watched Duo scrutinize the layout of the neighborhood through his binoculars. A slew of deaths with no apparent cause aside from, in the ME's words, 'massive cerebral hemorrhage', had caught our attention all the way from a different cluster. Not normal, we'd agreed with the examiner, unable to look away from the twisted expressions of the victims. They'd decided on a case of genetic fault, as was common in colony deaths that appeared natural but without a detectable cause. The fact that they'd taken place in the same four-block neighborhood, well...coincidence, surely.

As Duo memorized every face and every nook and cranny in the target zone, I leaned back against the railing that separated those on top of the building - us, for instance - from plunging ten stories to their deaths. I held up The Book, fingers tracing over the entry I'd found while he'd been doing his own homework.

"I think we're looking at some kind of curse," I said quietly, leaning over until our shoulders nearly brushed, the sleeve of his black Henley contrasting with my own plain white tee. "But considering the variety of effects, I think it's most likely not just one curse."

"So, we're not dealing with a curse, so much as a curse-caster," he mused, lowering the binoculars and glancing over his shoulder at me. "Great. Witches. Not exactly my strong suit."

"Nor mine," I admitted pointlessly - we both knew this was all new to me. "And The Book hasn't given up a lot of details. Or, well, it's too scattered for me to piece it all together."

"Witches come in a lot of flavors," Duo informed me. "From the classic consort-of-Satan to the less creepy but no less dangerous dungeons-and-dragons-mage to the honestly-just-a-slightly-psychic-herbalist, which is...not really dangerous unless you stomp on their cardamom, to be honest. But when it comes to actually dealing with witches?" He shrugged. "Never had to do it before, and I'm not sure where to start."

"I suppose..." I stopped, pursing my lips, but it was too late. Duo was giving me a questioning look, clearly open for any suggestion, and I continued reluctantly. "Witches are basically human, correct?"

"Yup," he replied, popping the 'p' needlessly.

I turned back to The Book. "Then they'll have human motivations," I pointed out. "Therefore, if we treat these incidences as though they were regular murders, we should be able to uncover the motive and thus, the killer."

"Oooh," Duo teased, elbowing me. "Score one for the cop. Okay, Columbo, what's our first move?"

* * *

"Do you know of any reason someone might've wanted to harm Carl?" I asked, my tone pitched perfectly between soothing and authoritative.

Mrs. Carl Cooper snuffled pitifully as Duo stared at me, eyebrows winging high on his forehead as I quickly and effectively broke down the widow's defenses and carefully extracted the information we needed without causing her undue emotional damage.

Thank you, witness interrogation training. You continue to benefit society.

I kept half an eye on Andy, the Coopers' daughter, as she scuffed the toes of her trainers against the pavement, peering around in the manner of bored preschoolers everywhere. She had been quiet, fairly standoffish, but having just lost her father, neither of us was especially surprised. Duo caught her eye now and made a couple of faces at her, drawing out a little giggle, before turning his attention back to her mother. I could tell that he, like me, felt we were getting closer to the mark with Mrs. Cooper - her husband had been the first victim.

So deep was I in my questioning that I didn't notice Andy's eyes tracking the progress of a mangy stray cat across the street. I did, however, notice when she jerked her hand from her mother's grasp, darting out into the street to reach the animal.

Duo, whose attention had never wandered completely from the child, reached out like a striking snake, snatching her up and out of the path of an oncoming car as she wailed for her 'kitty'. Mrs. Cooper shrieked, one hand clutching her heart, as the girl yanked at Duo's shirt and kicked him soundly in the stomach with her angry little feet.

"Easy, there, kiddo," Duo wheezed, prying her little fist off his shoulder and holding it well away from his braid as a precaution. "You shouldn't play in traffic," he added, handing her off to her shaking mother.

"Er, thank you, Mrs. Cooper," I added, somewhat too startled by the rapid chain of events to try to dig further - the woman was already too frazzled to be reliable, besides.

We walked away instead, Duo alternating between rubbing his stomach and his nose, sniffling a little as I contemplated the information I'd gathered.

"I think Carl Cooper was the key," I put forth. "I think to find out what happened to the others, we need to find out what happened to him."

"Yeah." Duo sniffled again, nose twitching against the manufactured autumn air. "Hey, did the widow seem a little stranyo to you?"

Stranyo, I knew, meant 'strange'. Definitely L2 in origin. I hummed in agreement, nodding. "She was frightened. I don't think she knows what happened to her husband, but she knows something."

"So why didn't we - damn it," he grumbled, rubbing his nose harder. "Why didn't we shake it out of her?"

"Duo, there's no way she would have answered our questions reliably if we'd pushed her. She was too afraid, too emotional, and after just that little bit of questioning, too frazzled, even without her child nearly getting herself run down."

"Yeah," he agreed, pinching his nostrils shut like it might stop the itch. "Fucking allergies."

"We'll keep digging. Find out who the witch is and how they're connected to...to..."

Duo blinked, glancing sidelong at me as I stopped, staring at him in horror. My mind was processing things, little things, big things, but right now, one thing was definitely standing out.

"'Fei?"

"Duo..." I didn't know how to vocalize my thoughts, but I saw the moment it sank in for him, too.

Due to being a closed environment, and a heavily-filtered one with a constant air exchange, allergies on colonies - and especially among colonists whose families had lived in space for generations - were nearly nonexistent. I never got them in space (though Earth was a different story), and so far as I knew, neither did Duo.

His hands fell to his sides as his face twisted into a furious scowl, and I watched in horror as blood began to trickle from his nose.

* * *

  
  


"Fuckin' witches," my companion grumbled, leaning forward and pinching his nose in a desperate attempt to stem the flow of blood.

I hummed in agreement, still tearing through our belongings, looking for the curse. What did a curse even look like? My mind raced, flipping through the Book mentally as I worked, digging through all I'd learned. 

Hex bags - most likely. Easy to make with access to the intended victim, easy to place, worked like a blunt instrument. Peering at Duo, I grimaced as blood continued to flow through his fingers in a worryingly rapid manner. Blunt instrument, indeed.

I couldn't rule out other possibilities, though. It could be a talisman of some kind, a channeling object, a poppet...

Cringing at the thought - a poppet would be in the hands of the user, and there was no way I had yet learned to quickly block such an attack - I sat back on my heels, every nook and cranny inspected, everything we owned strewn about, nothing out of place detected.

Duo groaned. "Shit way to die, man, bleedin' through the nose like the slowest kid on the dodgeball court."

Well, that was my interpretation of his muttering, which sounded more like a very muffled 'shih way d'die, bed, bleed'd drew d'doze lie d'slowez gid o'd'dazhball core' to me. Luckily, a lifetime of having been on both the giving and receiving side of a blunt force trauma to the face had given me a certain degree of fluency in bloody-nose-ese.

"Think, Duo," I hissed, lunging forward and gripping his shoulder. "You know more about this than I do, you know The Book better. How could they be doing this?"

"Uhhh..." Blinking at me blearily, he swayed a bit where he sat. "Cursed object...hex bag...umm...curse mark..."

"Mark?" Narrowing my eyes, I started tugging on his shirt. "Damn it. The girl."

"Huh?"

"The girl," I snapped, forcing his shirt up over his head and shoving him over to lie on his stomach. "The little kid you saved, Andy. She was..."

Duo squirmed weakly. "C'mon, 'Fei, can't you romance me a li'l first?" he joked.

"Shut up." Flicking his braid aside, I scowled at the tiny, flower-like pattern that seemed to rotate under the skin of the back of his left shoulder, right where the girl's toddler fingers had grasped him. "God *damn* it."

Of course they'd use the form of a child, I thought. The one thing Duo knew better than to trust, and yet the one thing he couldn't resist trusting - a child in need. I snarled in impotent rage as my fists curled against Duo's clammy skin.

"What do I do?" Leaning back, I looked over to where our supplies had been thrown. "Duo, what do I do for a curse mark? Duo?" I looked back down at my companion. "Duo...Duo!"

Blood seeped into the sheets, a stark contrast to his pale, slack face. I pressed shaking fingers to his neck, feeling for his pulse - there. I breathed deeply. Sluggish, terrifyingly weak, but there. I had time.

Time to do what, I didn't know, but time nonetheless.

Running my hands through my tangled hair, I took two more deep breaths, then pushed myself to my feet, wasting a good minute staring around for any hint or clue as to what the solution was. Or *a* solution, I wasn't in a position to be terribly picky. Anything that would get us both out of this alive would do. Kicking my duffle bag aside, I spied the book underneath it - an old paperback edition of some long-ago fantasy series by some long-dead author - that I'd grabbed with the rest. Something to do on the shuttle, I remembered thinking what seemed like years ago. It had been an interesting read, to say the least.

Wyrd Sisters, it was called, and suddenly I had a solution. Probably not the best solution, but perhaps...

Yanking Duo's boot off, I slipped out the knife he stashed inside and threw open the motel room door. The elderly couple passing by the room took one look at the spatters of blood on my shirt and the knife in my hand (and probably the crazed, determined look in my eyes) and backtracked faster than I'd ever seen two people using canes move. Rolling my eyes, I decided to worry about Duo now and possible law enforcement involvement later.

I snatched up a handful of shrubbery from the pitiful-looking display underneath our window and hacked it off, shaking it a bit and nodding in satisfaction. It would do. Kicking the door shut again, I fumbled for my lighter, taking a moment to pry the smoke detector open and knock the battery out before setting my makeshift incense to smoldering.

"Please let this work," I prayed to whatever - probably intensely amused - deity might be listening as I clumsily clambered onto the bed, smoking shrubbery in one hand and probably-illegal knife in the other. Clearing my throat, I began.

"Healing energies, I summon thee. With the...um...Sword of Purity, I summon thee," I stuttered, brain scrambling for makeshift words that sounded at least somewhat legitimate. I traced around the odd, bruise-like curse mark with the knife, drawing blood in a clockwise circle and telling myself firmly that this was a holy blessing with a sanctified blade.

"With the...uh..." I coughed, wrinkling my nose as the acrid smoke wafted into my face. "With the Sacred Herbs of...um...the Archangel Gabriel," I coughed, cheeks pinking though no one was around to hear me, "I summon thee." I brushed the ashy ends of the incredibly sacred herbs of incredibly sacred origin around the mark, also clockwise, because it was supposed to be clockwise.

I stopped. These things, in my limited experience, were supposed to be done in threes, but I'd only two things in my hands. Without thinking, I pricked my left ring finger, stuck out awkwardly as I clutched the shrubbery, and pressed the beading drops of my own blood to the center of the mark. "With the Blood of the...uh..." My face reddened further as I stumbled over the first thing that came to mind. The first, very untrue thing, mind you. "The Blood of the...the Faithful," I saved myself, squeezing my eyes shut, "I summon thee!"

Kneeling there, awkwardly straddling Duo's hips with the crumbling remains of the pilfered greenery in my bleeding left hand, the slightly-bloody pilfered knife in my right, and focused all my will on forcing out the curse and definitely not on how screwed I'd be if housekeeping walked in just then.

"In the name of...the Archangel Gabriel," I half-shouted, "and...the...by the...power of Christ!"

Nothing happened.

Gritting my teeth, I screwed my eyes shut and clenched my fists around my makeshift sacred artifacts until I could feel my knuckles creak. This will work, I demanded, reaching down into the very depths of my soul and dragging my dusty, long-unused stubbornness to bear. This *will* work.

For a breathless second, I felt something pushing back. A cry of dismay caught in my throat as the something brushed against my consciousness, cold as the depths of space and seemingly as vast, and I felt my will waver. There was another second, one of almost smug certainty that I knew, instinctively, was directed at me.

Like hell, I thought. I didn't know who - what - it was, but whatever it was, it had made the fatal mistake of making me angry. I drew my mental sword, gathered my will back about myself, and cleaved at the...the...whatever it was with all the fire and steel my soul possessed.

"Be healed!" I ordered my comatose partner in a voice that brooked no argument, whacking him on the head with the smoking leaves.

There was a moment of silence, a feeling like a wall I'd been pushing against giving way, and then his eyes flew open, which was the only warning I had before he convulsed, keening in pain, back arching so suddenly I was flung to the floor. By the time I regained my senses, twisting onto my knees to peer over the edge of the bed, he was groaning quietly, struggling to push himself up. He gave up on the endeavor shortly, head lolling to the side, and he blinked at me.

"...no," he sighed quietly. "I don't want to know."

I nodded in agreement, because I was certain he didn't, but something more pressing was at hand.

"I don't think we're dealing with a witch," I rasped, still shaking. "There was something...else. Something..." My face twisted in distaste. "Something smug," I spat.

Duo snorted. "The Book."

Tossing aside the cooling remains of my sacred herbs, I scrabbled under the bed for said Book, batting away his weakly questing fingers and flipping through the pages until I found it.

"Oh," I said, feeling just a tiny bit out of my depth.

"Oh?" Duo croaked. "Oh what?"

Finger pressed to a perfect copy of the mark I'd found on Duo's shoulder, stamped in the middle of a rambling entry made by one Father John, I turned The Book so Duo could read it. He did so with quick flicks of his eyes before he groaned again.

"Fuck."

* * *

"Mrs. Cooper, you need to calm down," I intoned, lowering my rifle as Duo caught Andy in his arms. The girl was heaving and thrashing and screaming, smoke issuing from her mouth and nose as the holy water did its work.

Her mother gaped at me, face pale, as I helped Duo pin Andy's arms to her sides and haul her to her bed. "You...you..."

"We are here to help," I told her in my best I'm-a-cop-I-know-what-I'm-doing voice. Miraculously, it worked in spite of the fact that none of it was true, and she relaxed marginally, hope gleaming in her eyes.

"Regna terrae, cantate Deo, psallite Domino qui fertis super caelum caeli ad Orientem," Duo began, Bible in hand, pausing to splash probably more holy water than necessary on Andy's face as she tried to sit up. She fell back, howling and smoking, pale, chubby cheeks reddening.

I took Mrs. Cooper by the elbow and turned her away. "Tell me," I said.

Tears welled up in her eyes. "I don't think she's ever been right," the woman admitted. "She's my baby, though. She...is she going to..." Drawing in a shivering breath, Mrs. Cooper looked back towards Andy, who was now shuddering with great, heaving gasps, like those of a beast. "Don't hurt her," she begged.

"We're going to do everything we can to save her," I told her, though I made no further promises. Duo had told me what this process would entail as we'd torn through _Stella_ 's hold for the supplies we'd need. It wasn't going to be easy...on either of them.

"...omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica...."

"It wasn't her, was it?" Mrs. Cooper braced herself against the door, unwilling to pass me into the room, yet equally unwilling to abandon her child. "It wasn't her, k-killing all those...killing Carl..."

"No." Of this I was certain. "Andy is a victim, Mrs. Cooper. Just like the ones that died."

A sound like nails on a chalkboard emanated from Andy's throat, and Mrs. Cooper made to lunge forward. I grabbed her just as Duo slammed the Bible onto the child's chest, pinning her with a strength not wholly his own.

"Vade, Satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis!" he spat, teeth bared as lightbulbs throughout the house shattered and sparked. "Humiliare sub potenti manu dei, contremisce et effuge-!"

"Caritas est mater vestra misit eam," the creature within Andy hissed. "Sperat autem protinus te videre."

Duo froze, panting harshly. "Hu...humiliare sub potenti manu dei," he continued giving himself a little shake, "contremisce et-"

"Vobiscum calcet super eum," not-Andy sneered, "sicut praedictum est."

This time, Duo did not freeze. Baring his teeth in a vicious snarl, he lifted the Bible minutely, then smacked it down onto Andy's chest again, planting his hand atop it firmly. "Contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili nomine, quem inferi tremunt," he growled.

"Trust us," I said quietly to Mrs. Cooper.

As her daughter's voice joined the demon's, screeching in agony, Mrs. Cooper closed her eyes and nodded.

"Ut inimicos sanctae Ecclesiae humiliare digneris, te rogamus, audi nos!"

Pulling her away, I reached out and closed the door.

* * *

"I shot a kid," I said suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence (if any moment spent aboard _Stella_ in flight could be considered silent) and plunging us into an awkward, this-will-probably-involve-feelings atmosphere.

Duo shifted in his seat, rotating his scabbing shoulder absently. He'd slept for eighteen hours following the exorcism, but whether it had been the physical and spiritual toll of the act itself, or the near-death experience just before, I couldn't be sure. It was probably, I noted as I unhooked my harness, a goodly bit of both.

"It was a holy water dart, Wu, not a bullet - Andy'll be fine," he reassured me. "Y'know, now that she's not possessed anymore, being that we saved her and all."

I highly doubted she'd be 'fine' as Duo said - she'd been possessed by a demon for at least half her four years of life, and the exorcism had been...I shuddered. No, Andy would not be 'fine', but she'd live, and I knew that's what Duo had meant.

I took a deep breath, pushing aside thoughts of a tiny body wracked with convulsions and the breaking of glass and Duo pinning a child down, screaming purifying words as she screamed in a more primal way...

"I shot a kid two and a half months ago, in Kansas City, during a sting," I elaborated, my voice quiet and less emotional than I'd feared it would be.

Duo said nothing this time, but he paused in his double-check of the navigation system, eyes on the readout instead of me, which I appreciated.

"It was a raid on a human trafficking ring," I continued, allowing myself to brush against the memories, but too afraid to plunge back into them fully. "We were being careful, it was planned out - it was Barton's plan, you know how those are," I muttered, watching Duo nod out of the corner of my eye. "Backup plans for the backup plans, and backups for those, just in case."

I could hear him now, like an echo off the comm, telling us to hold our positions. A faint smell of filth and fear, the sounds of a muttered deal going down behind the door...

"None of the...the _cargo_ was supposed to be there - we'd secured that already, offsite at the docks - but when we went in..."

"Shields," Duo mumbled, eyes flicking up to catch my gaze briefly in the reflection of the plex viewscreen. "In case of a raid."

"Shields," I agreed quietly. "About six kids, none of them in double digits even accounting for stunted growth. We were fine, we'd had a backup for hostage situations, but the kids..." My mouth worked, but I couldn't force the words out.

"Weren't hostages," he finished, giving me a moment to breathe. He didn't say anything else, but I knew he knew what was coming. He let me say it anyway.

"The smallest one, probably six or seven, he..." I closed my eyes. "I saw a flash of metal, the barrel of the gun pointed at one of the team, _my_ team, and...I shot him."

Duo said nothing, and when I dared a glance, I saw he was still studying me in the viewscreen. When he caught my gaze, he didn't look away. Shame bubbled up in my gut at what I saw there.

Which was nothing, really. No pity, no disgust. No attempts at deep understanding. No sneering attitude or comments about police brutality. No judgement, even. It was as though I'd told him my favorite color or what I'd had for lunch two days ago, rather than confessing to one of the worst moments in my life - and considering my life, that was saying something.

It wasn't my fault, Commander Une had said, it was the fault of the scum who had tormented those kids into submission. Protocol was clear, Barton had said, threats needed to be eliminated, he'd been aiming to kill.

Or Sally's little gem. _You didn't put the gun in his hand, you didn't tell him to fire on the police._

Who, I'd asked myself, put the gun in my hand? Who told me to fire on a child?

That was the root of it, though, wasn't it? It wasn't simply about the act of having shot a child. It was that, underlying all of those comments, there was an absolution. I was not to blame. And that, I couldn't accept. There had been plenty of blame to go around, from the traffickers to me, but just the constant reassurances, the talk of having done the right thing, done the only thing I could have...that was what I couldn't stomach.

The idea that there would be no punishment, no formal rebuke, nothing but a note marked in my file for discharge of my sidearm in an approved manner...I could not accept that in that organization, in this new Peace, that such an act would not result in some kind of reparative action.

"How's the kid doing now?" Duo asked.

"I...he..." I watched his expression in the viewscreen. Still without judgement, only mild curiosity. He could have been asking after a mutual acquaintance with whom neither of us was especially close for all he seemed to care. "He's recovered, I hear, and has been handed to Child Services."

"Glad to hear it." He went back to checking his instruments.

"How did you-?"

"I may not know you that well, man," Duo allowed with a humorless quirk of his lips, "but I do know you. I know at least that much of you."

There was a wealth of assumption in that statement. That I'd purposefully shot only to wound. That I'd keep up with the child's progress regardless of where blame lay. That either of those things were somehow tied to who I was.

He offered no words of comfort. No absolution of his own. I watched as he hailed a freighter passing by at some distance with a distance of my own. There was no attempt to make me feel better for me to reject, and no judgement for me to accept, and suddenly I felt quite at a loss and not a little silly.

Duo didn't understand, I knew. He got it, I was sure - my reasoning, my feelings on the subject, what I'd been expecting from him in response to my confession. He didn't understand, though, didn't bother to sympathize, and simply accepted what I'd told him and allowed me the dignity of my feelings without forcing me to justify them or let them go.

It left me feeling more than a little off-kilter, and grateful in a strange, wary sort of way.

"So," he said easily just before the silence could stretch from awkward clear into uncomfortable, "where to now?"

"You still want to travel with me?" I asked, even as I wished I didn't feel the need to. After that reaction, what did I think was going to happen?

Sure enough, Duo finally gave me a direct look, one so full of catty exasperation it could have been from my own personal stock. "No, 'Fei, I'm gonna drag you into dez-space and kick you out the airlock. Jesus, man, who do you think I am?"

I couldn't help it. I laughed.

"Point taken," I replied, the ache in my chest loosening but little. "There was something on the feed about a mysterious eyeball melting incident on L5-A0641."

"L5 it is," Duo drawled, punching in the coordinates.

Leaning back in my seat as _Stella_ rattled her way through the vacuum, I closed my eyes and thought of Lucas, of the progress notes Barton still sent me.

I thought of Andy, and of the hard road she'd have ahead of her, of the horrors she'd have to face once she was old enough to comprehend.

'...we saved her....'

Breathing deeply again, I stared out at the expanse of space, and at my partner's reflection in the viewscreen as he tapped the navigational readout pensively.

Crossroads, I decided, weren't all that bad.

* * *

To Be Continued...

"I am  _ so _ attracted to you right now."

Wufei dropped his stance, arms hanging limp at his sides as he stared at me, keen eyes blinking slowly as he processed my sudden confession.

I slapped my hands over my mouth, because-

"I did  _ not _ mean to say that!"

Sighing, Wufei, smoothed the few loose strands of his hair back out of his eyes. "Okay, Duo. Can we get back to-"

"You have such pretty hair," I spat out, even as I tried to clench my jaw against the words. "I bet you'd look lindy with it down."

Dusky pink bloomed across Wufei's cheeks, mirroring my own mortified blush, and he opened and closed his mouth a couple of times.

"No! I mean! No! It's just that you're really pretty and not like girly pretty just pretty-pretty and I don't know why I'm saying any of this it's not like I'm lookin' to bang you or anything although if you're into that I wouldn't say no but I'm not like in  _ love _ with you or anything I'm just saying you're really attractive and totally good at hand-to-hand and that's kinda hot because y'know competence is sexy and it was just an observation except I'm pretty sure I just meant to think it so I'm not sure why I'm saying it out loud oh hey look we're clear to leave quarantine!"

Turning on my heel, I scurried off as quickly as I could without outright running away, leaving my hunting partner staring after me, hopefully too overwhelmed by the sudden flurry of words to actually get around to translating them.

What the  _ hell  _ was that about, anyway?

_ Hunters In Space Episode Two: Loose Lips Sink... _

On a routine 'Shake and Bake', Wufei and Duo stumble upon a strange artifact that may or may not be evil. They can't really be sure, because even though Duo suddenly can't stop saying exactly what he's thinking, it's not like he didn't do that most of the time, anyway. A few things he probably wouldn't have wanted to share come out, though...and with the sudden interest of an old wartime friend focusing on them, it's probably not the best time for Duo to live up to his motto in a big way.

Ending Theme: [[Rocket - The Wante](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tzIA_9759Q)[d](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tzIA_9759Q)]

**Author's Note:**

> So yes, there is a lot of slang being thrown around, particularly by Duo. It's evolved from the most common American languages - Spanish and English with a bit of French and Portuguese - and hey, I only speak one of those languages. If any of the words sound weird to you, or like their origins don't make sense, let me know.
> 
> This Episode's Glossary of L2/Sweeper slang:
> 
> Dez-space: n. Empty space, usually referring to large stretches between outposts between the colonies and non-Earth planets; from the Spanish ‘desierto’, meaning ‘deserted’ or ‘empty’.
> 
> Loq’sey: coll. Whatever; fromt eh Spanish ‘lo que sea’, meaning ‘whatever’.
> 
> Stranyo: adj. Odd or strange; bastardized mix of the Spanish ‘extraño’ and the French ‘étrange’, meaning ‘strange’, as well as the English.
> 
> Strelos: n. People born in space or having lived in space since childhood; from the Spanish ‘estrellas’, meaning ‘stars’. Recently has been used to refer to those who dedicate their lives to space regardless of when they immigrated.
> 
> Let me know what you think! I can't promise episodes will be fast coming, as only the first two are written so far, but I promise, there's a lot of great stuff to come.
> 
> \- Izzy


End file.
